The Night House (2 page)

Inside the Fire Room, creatively named for being the only room with a fireplace, is where it starts.
My
hunger. It is different from the vamps’. It is a void, embedded deep in my veins, which can never be filled.

Nauth
.

The word echoes in my head and sends chills down my spine.

I want it.

I want it now.

But I must be patient and distract myself by taking in the decorations in the Fire Room. It really seems like it was transported straight from some Victorian’s living room. From the stiff baroque curtains and the velvet couch, to the unused silverware sitting on the dark wooden table, I blend right in.

This is one big show for the vampires. The whole Night House feels like a movie set. I am an actress. Finn directs us. Still, I know it’s real. So I face the fire and let it warm my skin as I wait for everything to get too close.

James

I chase the edges of a dream as I slowly come out of sleep. It is always disappointing to wake up. Sleep is safe. I can’t get lost in someone else’s head if I’m asleep.

As the feeling returns to my body, I reach over to my nightstand. My fingers press into a chunk of clay. It forces my attention onto my own body. I lie for a couple of minutes, inhaling the scent of the clay, and mold it in my hand. For a minute, I am completely inside myself. I feel almost normal.

I take my time sitting up, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. My afternoon nap became an evening it seems. Not that I mind. I don’t exactly have big plans. Summer break, woo-hoo. I should be excited to be a senior this year, but all I can think about is applying for college.

I press the clay into the table, leaving an imprint from my hand in its surface. Then I get out of bed, retrieve my zip-up and head for the door. The hall is empty. I don’t hear anything coming from Ally’s room—but that doesn’t mean anything. Just as I step fully out of my room, I hear a horrible scream, and then there are arms around my neck and Ally is on my back.

She hollers, “Bro attack!”

I barely remain standing and take hold of the railing for support. She secures her position by strangling me with her arms and legs, like some kind of python.

“You could’ve killed me,” I gasp.

She laughs. “What if we just went over the railing?”

“How long were you waiting to ambush me?” I hoist her into a more comfortable position.

“Dude, you gotta come see my new axe,” She deftly ignores my question. “While you were passed out, the ’rents took me to BlueBond.”

“You bought another guitar?”

“Not a guitar,” she says proudly. She steers me into her room. I hobble inside and then she leaps off my back, practically hopping over to her bed. Then, delicately, she holds up a blue acoustic. “Meet Count Basie.”

“What happened to the guitar?”

With a shrug, she sits on the floor. “Got boring. Needed to spice up my life.”

I join her on the floor. “It’s very bold.”

She strokes the neck of it. “He’s gorgeous. Do you wanna test him out with me?”

I mull over the idea. I just woke up, so my head is fairly clear—but I don’t know if I feel like it right now.

“Come
on
.” She sings the words, then slings the bass around her neck. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Alright, fine.” With a stretch of my arms, I sprawl out on her floor, eyes closed. I take a deep breath in and spread my arms out, away from my body.

“You’re like a little lowercase
T,
” Ally says with a giggle.

“Concentrating.”

“Sorry,” she whispers.

With a few more deep breaths, my muscles begin to relax. I attempt to open my mind up. “Ready.”

Ally begins playing. She is a bit of a musical prodigy—never had trouble picking up an instrument. It’s the mastering she has trouble with. The girl is so restless, she can’t stick with anything for more than a couple months.

The notes are shaky at first, but she quickly figures it out. This is our ritual. She plays one of her many instruments, and I play along with her. Not physically. Mentally. As she plucks the strings and creates chords, I feel the pressure in my own fingers, the reverberation of the acoustic bass in my chest, and the muscles in my arms flexing.

I have this thing. For as long as I can remember, it’s been a part of me. Pure empathy, that’s how Ally describes it. I can feel anything and everything in the people around me. I feel their muscles working, their happiness, their sadness. A stomachache, a bug bite, a school crush. Any raw feeling, I can feel it too.

It can get pretty tiresome, so I have a lot of ways to try to deal with it. This is one of them. Ally allows me to feel her playing music. It’s good, both because I can try to pinpoint the muscles precisely, and also because playing music makes Ally calmer. The calmer I am, the more control I have.

Ally’s hands are moving too quickly, and the movements are blurring inside my head.

“Take it easy, Jimi Hendrix.”

“Sorry, bro.” She slows down.

I lift my arms up and try to match her position. Then I let my body take over, and I begin plucking imaginary strings, moving my hand across invisible frets.

“Yeah,” she says. “Look at you go. You’re a regular guitar hero.”

She begins picking up the pace. Ally likes to push me. Sometimes, I can handle it. The notes start getting complicated and at first, I can keep up. I feel weirdly proud of myself. Then I start to feel Ally’s pride for me, like a weight placed onto my forehead. The wall that I carefully built between her brain and mine begins to dissolve. I can’t help it—I start to feel the giant ball of yarn that is her constant emotional state. I feel the soreness in her legs from walking through town and how hungry she is, and the calluses on her fingers and a spike of guilt that I can’t identify. Her excitement over the exercise and the bass is overwhelming.

“Stop.”

It goes quiet. She sets the bass down, crawling a little closer. “You need something? You want your clay?”

“I’ve got this,” I tell her, though I’m not sure that’s true. I want it to be true. I want to be able to control this ability. I don’t want to feel like I have to invade everyone’s personal space. I hate it. I really do. It gives me nothing but pain.

I focus on my breathing. I count in my head, in time with my breaths. I feel my lungs fill up with air, my chest rising and falling. Ally begins to fade from my grasp. Soon, she is nothing but a dull ache in my head.

“You good?” she asks after a minute.

“I think so.”

“Bro, your hands were moving faster than I’ve ever seen.” She smiles, like it’s a good thing. “You could make a living out of being someone’s ghost guitarist. Like if they’re too shy to play in front of crowds, you could just stand up there and pretend to play for them.”

I manage a laugh. “Yeah, and they’d love me for that.”

“People are weird, man,” she says. “Maybe there’s some Boo Radley super star guitarist who can’t get gigs because he’s a recluse and never bathes, but like, he secretly wants to be famous.”

I pull myself up off the floor. Sometimes I think my biological parents had this ability, too, and that’s why they gave me up. But I don’t like to think about my biological parents because then I have to think about the fact that they gave me up.

It doesn’t matter. I have a family now. My adoptive parents used to be foster parents for kids waiting for relatives to be identified. Ally stayed with them, and they grew to love her. When none of Ally’s relatives came for her, the Fieldses adopted her. And when I was twelve and fostering with them, Ally convinced the Fieldses to adopt me too. I owe her a lot because of that. This is the best family I’ve ever been with. It’s why I changed my last name to Fields. My adoptive parents, Amanda and Neil, still don’t know about my empathy. They think I’m agoraphobic with OCD. They’re not exactly wrong.

“Hey, you know what’s happening tonight?”

“Something I don’t want to go to?” I ask.

She sticks her tongue out. “It’s Shell’s birthday party.”

Shell, with her round face, soft dark hair, and a healing hamstring that I can’t help but feel when she comes back from lacrosse practice.

“How many people are going?”

Ally shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably not that many. You know Shell, she’s a bit shy. Perfect for you, really. Straight edge, but not stuck-up. Cute. Honor student like you.”

I shove Ally’s knee. The contact sends a wave of
Ally
through me.

“You could use a girlfriend,” Ally keeps going, undeterred. I guess she’s grown used to my passive ways. “Someone to get you out of the house. What has it been? Three weeks?”

“Two and a half,” I mutter.

“You are wasting summer break, bro. It’s time to go crazy and kiss cute girls before you’re a senior. Then you’re just going to graduate and become a professional lump.”

I sigh heavily. A party full of drunk kids. Watching Ally make not-so-great decisions. Going out at night. Going out at all.

“Oh my God, I was trying to be subtle,” Ally bursts out. “Shell has the biggest crush on you, you goof! Go and make out with her before some other guy swoops in!”

My breath catches. “A crush? On me?”

“She thinks you’re hot, bro! She was so embarrassed to tell me because she’s younger than you, but I told her you only hate sixteen-year-olds a little.”

“Did you really say that?”

She bursts out laughing. “You think you’d be better at sarcasm with the whole magic brain thing.”

“It’s not magic; it’s annoying.”

Ally glares at me. “You think avoiding people is going to make it less annoying? You need practice. You need to get out of the freaking house!”

I breathe out a sigh and focus on thoughts of Shell. “I guess. It could be nice.”

“Victory!” Ally does a fist pump.

Bianca

The crisply dressed man who enters the Fire Room should be avoiding a shady place like this, scoffing at girls like me. Instead, he’s spending outrageous amounts of money for one measly hour with me.

Jeremiah is different from other vampires. Whereas most of the vamps I meet appear to be in their twenties, Jeremiah could be in his forties. And yet he still possesses that unsettling beauty. He’s classically handsome, like Cary Grant. Considering he was probably born a hundred years before Cary, it’s not a surprise. He has black hair that holds its wavy shape around his head, but it would probably give if I touched it. Strong jaw, masculine cheekbones, hard eyes. His features are blank, but not in a lazy way like Finn’s. Jeremiah makes himself purposefully mysterious—though he is not mysterious to me anymore. I know exactly how I feel about him.

I’m terrified.

When I was still brand new to the Night House I remember overhearing a conversation between Finn and Jeremiah. It was before my appointment. They stood outside the door, not bothering to whisper because they knew it didn’t matter if I heard.

“How much for the St. Germain girl?” Jeremiah asked casually.

“She’s not for sale,” Finn responded. I could hear the caution in his voice.

“Everything has its price,” Jeremiah said.

“I can’t just give away my biggest selling point. She’s far too valuable in the long term.”

“I would not normally ask this of you.” Jeremiah’s voice remained level. “This is an unusual case.”

“I can’t allow it.” Finn said. “I have a business to run, you know that.”

That appeared to be the end of the discussion, but the sentiment was clear: Jeremiah wanted me for his collection.

I still don’t know what he meant by “unusual case.” When I told Alex about this, she looked at me like I had two heads. She said, “Your blood must taste like candy. Or money. Jeremiah would like that.”

We’d laughed at the time, but my dealings with Jeremiah have been anything but funny. I’ve noticed more and more just how unusual he seems. He’s almost always accompanied by other vamps. Finn will do almost anything for him, which includes spending extra money, and that’s a miracle in and of itself. I’ve seen Jeremiah do things that no other client has done: renting out the entire Night House, canceling other clients’ appointments. He’s a control freak for sure.

Today he wears a dark suit like any human would. Only upon closer inspection can I see his watch has real gold and his suit is soft, well tailored, and expensive. There is a pin on his lapel. The pin is just a shiny bar of royal blue, no thicker than my pinkie and just as short. But it’s this little pin that sets my teeth on edge.

That blue pin means Jeremiah is high-ranking. The vamps who guard him and do his bidding—the officers—have black pins. They work for Jeremiah. He scares me because he’s a powerful vampire.

The Night House isn’t what you’d call legal. Humans don’t know about it. Vampires are still just myths to the general public. There are very few of us who know about them. Only Finn and the clients know who we girls are. And they wouldn’t miss us if we disappeared.

I know it.

Jeremiah knows it.

“Bianca,” he says.

I still have to ignore this gut instinct that tells me to defend myself whenever he speaks. His voice is commanding without being loud. It suits him. It’s full and low, like a smoker’s voice without the gravel.

“How are we?” Jeremiah asks. He slides the suit jacket off and drapes it on a chair, like he lives here.

I don’t speak to him. I made that mistake once before.

“Excellent. Sit.”

I move toward the velvet couch and sit at the very edge. Jeremiah approaches the phonograph in the corner of the room. My heart has stepped on the accelerator, and my blood is racing now. I hate this part: the acting. It’s horrible, especially when I can feel the wounds on my neck and wrists aching. They pulse with discomfort, as if my blood will just push those neat little clusters of scar tissue right out of my skin.

Jeremiah stands in front of me as light symphonic music surrounds us. He is tall, and I’m little. I think he likes how that makes him feel. I
look
like prey, like a scared animal. But I can’t imagine that these natural-born predators enjoy having their meals laid out for them. I bet he misses the chase. I certainly miss running. At least then I wasn’t trapped.